Past Conditions
I’m ready for fall to arrive any time now. Heat and humidity have been terrible throughout much of August, including this past week. Highs consistently rose into the upper 80s to middle 90s each day. Louisville, Madisonville, and Hartfort had the highest temperatures, hitting 97 degrees. Combined with dew points in the 70s, heat indices once again topped the century mark, which has been a trend throughout the month. Preliminary data from the Ag Weather Center indicates that this will be one of our warmer August months on record. As of now, data shows August 2021 would sit in the top 20 warmest of all-time with data going back to 1895. Interestingly, we achieved that despite the fact that we never had a single high temperature of 100 or greater across the Commonwealth during the month.
It was a hit or miss for rainfall this week for the Commonwealth. After starting the week on a dry note, isolated to scattered coverage developed each day from Wednesday onward. Any storm was again capable of producing very heavy rainfall. This aspect, combined with the limited coverage, led to a perfect example of “my neighbor got an inch and I got nothing!” You can see that spotty coverage in the map below. One exception was across Western Kentucky, which missed out on most everything. In fact, Western Kentucky only averaged 0.15 inches for the week.
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